mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

i've heard a few rumors. i heard we might try to trade prince and maybe rip for bosh. i heard we had a good chance at signing boozer. it was on the si.com rumor mill though, so dont take it too seriously.

Sad thing is that this is the best case scenario for all this cap room. Carlos fucking Boozer. Carlos Boozer is a Robin. He's been an all-star, sure, but pretty much on reputation. He's not leading a team to anything. The Pistons need a new Batman. The worst thing about how they tore it apart was that they sold it to the fans with "we're going after the big free agents in 2010" which is crap because there's no way in hell that Lebron, Wade or Carmelo is coming here. Amare? Maybe, but I doubt it. Only if he can't get any other offers because of his injury history.

Also, for years, Detroit fans have envisioned trades with other teams as if the other team is stupid. Back in the day, the Pistons were supposedly sending Terry Mills and Lindsay Hunter for every player under the sun. The Wings were always sending Mathieu Dandenault and Kris Draper for Jaromir Jagr in his prime. Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince for Bosh isn't happening, just like Chauncey and Prince for Melo was never happening.

I'm not completely sure on who do I want the Pistons to draft in the 1st round. Terrible draft all around in terms of depth. Maybe DeMar DeRozan at #15 overall? He can backup the SF spot to Tayshaun Prince.

I can't imagine the Raptors wanting to make a trade like that. A number of reasons.

1. Bosh is younger and better than Rip, and Maxiell and the 2nd are virtually worthless.
2. Even if Bosh had told the Raptors that he won't be returning in 2010, they can probably get more value for him by waiting until teams are desperate at next year's trade deadline.
3. Rip has 4 years left on his contract at an astonishing price. That's a huge liability. The Raptors might be better off letting Bosh walk and using the money on the 2010 market.
4. The numbers are still off. You'd probably need Affalo in there, as well.
5. The Raptors pick 9th this year. That's a slot loaded with options at SG, but almost no big men. If there is any chance they can keep Bosh, they'd be better off with Gerald Henderson or Chase Buddinger at SG and Bosh at PF than Rip at SG and reaching for James Johnson, DuJuan Blair, or BJ Mullens.

Also, why does your two-deep contain all three 2nd round picks? Second rounders rarely contribute immediately (or at all, really), and this is supposed to be one of the weakest drafts in recent years. Our last seven second rounders? Deron Washington, Arron Affalo, Sammy Meija, Will Blalock, Amir Johnson, Alex Acker, Ricky Paulding. Those are some real luminaries, there.

Maxiel has no trade value and neither does the second rounder. The Raptors would only do this if they were absolutely desperate. And if they would, someone else would offer more than this. They'd have to give up at least an unprotected first rounder, and that likely wouldn't even get them to the bargaining table.

First, find a real coach. Second, pick up no one named Iverson, Oneill, Wallace or anyone whose career highlights are behind them. Third, if Joe D trades away another star for a has-been/never was, maybe he needs to look in the mirror.

Trading Billups for Iverson was the worst move EVER. Iverson is all hype and will hopefully be soon forgotten. Moreso than any other professional sport, a basketball team's success depends greatly on chemistry. With Billups, the Pistons had it, with Iverson . . . not so much.

What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve and...Those Who Stay WILL Be Champions.

I don't think he so much traded Billups for Iverson as he said to himself "hey, let's try this for a year then let Iverson walk and use the money to build cap space"

Seriously, this trade was about cap space, not Iverson. The Pistons had become stale and were never returning to the NBA Finals without a makeover. If you hold on to your core for too long, you'll end up going from the 1980's Tigers ----> 1990's Tigers.

Joe will com eup with something totally unexpected like he usually does. Joe hasn't really gotten the better of anyone for awhile, and it is about time he did.

I liked the Billups/AI move, though. They had to rebuild and let Stuckey grow. AI will be gone and they will have a lot more flexibility under the cap.

Who thought a gimpy-legged Grant Hill (who most of the league still saw as "heathy;" Hill would go on to cripple the Magic umder the cap for seven years) for Chucky Atkins and Ben Wallace would turn out well for the Pistons? Or Hamilton for Stackhouse? Or getting Sheed?

Joe has made a few bad moves, most notably the Darko Debacle and hiring Flip Squanders, but he has made quite a few good ones, too.

Why on earth would anyone want to come to the Pistons now? The winning mistique is gone, the head coach is a joke, and the trade bait is either OLD, unproven, or doesn't have an expiring contract.
Can you say goodbye to Deee Troit basketball?

NSFMF, building through the draft in the NBA only works if you have one of the first five picks and you don't use them on stiffs like Darko when you have Carmelo, Wade and Bosh available. These days, most NBA championship level teams are built through trades and free agency (Spurs excluded, but then again, they were built on having the first pick in the draft and not blowing it.) Drafts are seldom filled with can't miss contributors because a majority of the higher picks are guys who are 19 or 20 and need to adjust their games to play with men. Unless you pick really high, you are just hoping for a contributor. If a guy becomes a star, well, eureka.

but Joe seriously needs to be cut some slack on the Darko pick. Obviously, in hind sight, it was crazy to pick Darko over any number of guys in that draft. But it's not like Joe was breaking with conventional wisdom at the time; if Chad Ford is to be believed at all, there might have been one or two clubs in the whole league who would have considered taking Carmelo with the 2nd pick, and nobody was even mentioning Wade at that spot. Darko was supposed to be close to can't miss - I remember one anonymous executive saying he would have been the top pick in any other draft going back to the Webber draft in 93. Keeping with the theme of the rest of your post, sometimes shit just doesn't work out.

I might agree with you if the pick ever made any sense. You can't compare it to the Packers taking Mandarich over Barry Sanders (not that you did, but I hear this a lot). You can sort of compare it to the Blazers taking Sam Bowie over Jordan, but even that is a stretch.

The Blazers took Bowie stating that they already had their SG in Clyde Drexler, while the Pistons took Darko claiming they already have their SF in Tayshaun. But looking closer, Bowie was at least a college star with a reasonable expectation of future success, and Drexler was a future star, just not on Jordan's level. Darko was a complete unknown - a Serbian who played for a Serbian team, only he hardly ever played. He wasn't even much of an option off the bench. He was essentially Walter Hermann with a less cooler hairstyle. And to compare the Blazers' situation with Drexler to the Pistons' with Prince doesn't work either. Prince was perceived as a potential defensive stopper type who might contribute 10 points a game. Drexler was perceived to be the main piece in the Blazers' resurgence.

So to pass on Anthony, who was considered to be almost as can't miss of a star as Lebron at the time for a guy who looked like he could be a defensive stopper (and best case scenario, a not-totally-batshit and less offensively talented version of Ron Artest) is something that I feel I can hold against Dumars. Particularly in light of the fact that his best move ever (the Ben Wallace trade) was a fluke as he asked for John Amaechi and was turned down so he settled on Ben.

and more about taking a player with the highest perceived ceiling. While he was also a better personnel fit (given how he was projected to develop), I think the main reason he was drafted 2nd is that the Pistons' staff, along with just about every other staff in the league, thought that he had the highest ceiling in the draft of any player besides LeBron. And some people thought he might even rival LeBron. He was projected to be the best offensive post player in the league, with the tools to also be an outstanding post and off-ball defender.

A better analogy might be to the financial crisis; a large body of experts failed to see enormous risks that in hindsight look pretty obvious - in the case of Darko, that an 18 year-old with no real experience would successfully adapt his scoutable tools to the NBA. The difference here is that only the Pistons got the opportunity to look like idiots.

It should also be remembered that this was an era when league scouts would get erections just looking at maps of eastern Europe.

Fine, then the Pi$$ton$ can offer Afflalo, Brown, Bynum, Rip, Herrmann the Gerrmann, Amir, Maxiell, Dyess, Prince, Sharpe and Stuckey in a multiple team trade and receive Kobe, LeBron, Bosh, Boozer and Duncan. WOOOOOOOO THEY PLAY AS A TEAM!

1. A big man with skills in the paint. Right now we have Dyess (has become more of a mid-range shooter), Max (not technically a "big man" but I guess plays like one); Johnson (game still raw, more of an energy guy than a skilled one); Kwame (good defender, but has butterfingers on offense); Sheed (GONE).

2. A long-range shooter who can create his own shot (unlike Rip, who relies on moving without the ball). We lost this when we lost Billups.

A good example of #1 would be Boozer. Bosh plays a little small for his size.

A good example of #2 would be Ben Gordon. He may be fairly expensive after lighting it up in these playoffs though.

We obviously cannot afford both Boozer and Gordon.

Agree/disagree with assessment of needs?

Also, another issue we've lost track of is this: who's going to be our leader? That used to be Billups. Then I thought the mantle would pass to Rip, but Rip got benched. I don't see a clear leader right now.

“No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.”

you may not build your whole team through the draft, but that's how you get your superstar, which is of utmost importance in the nba these days. i can't think of one young star who wasn't drafted by the team he's on now (maybe joe johnson or al jefferson). the pistons may have a shot with Amare or Bosh, but who else out of the top guys, either this year or next, can they realistically get?

as a young star who wasn't drafted on the team he's on now? i mean, he's in his 20's still, isn't he?

But jeeeeeeeeeeez. After reading this thread, you'd think the Pistons are some terribly run organization that people trust as much as the Lions. We made it to SIX straight conference fucking finals, made two NBA finals, and won a championship. WTF people...they need to retool the roster at some point. I guess some people won't be happy unless you win the championship EVERY year.

the Red Wings are an outlier in the world of sports. Out of the 122 professional teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB, you can easily make the argument that the other 121 teams fall short of the standards set by the Red Wings. The Spurs might be the only team I could accept as being "better" over the last 10-20 years. I suppose the Patriots and Yankees are up on that level too, but these are all absolutely freak happenings. Maybe 1 team in each sport is capable of that level of year success.

As a way to stockpile picks. Teams are always looking for cap space and with everyone gearing up for 2010 and everyone else losing money, the league is going into salary dump mode. You take advantage of that and trade for a few big contracts teams don't want to pay, sort of like what almost happened with tyson chandler, you either rip someone off in the value of the player you get compared to what you give up, or you get a crappy player but a team gives you a first rounder just so they don't have to pay the salary you have to. Maybe you suck for a year but that just gives you a higher pick, and from there you build through the draft and use th big contracts, when they expire, to steal big name guys out of small markets, ala pau gasol for kwame brown.

Since when do you get a first rounder and a bloated contract together. Teams don't take on big contracts that have years left on them and wait for them to expire as the numbers have to match in the NBA. Teams take on big contracts that are expiring and the Pistons have absolutely no one of trade value under those circumstances. Plus who is going to want to play for Michael Curry, this team certainly didn't!

Teams are willing to dump high prices players, as evidence, again, by the Tyson Chandler almost trade. You offer to house these bad contracts for teams and trade back little in return, but also demand that the team gives you come compensation, in the form of draft picks. Teams really want to get rid of bad contracts now, with the economy in a downturn, and will do anything to get rid of them, including trading good players at an extreme discount, or, as the Phoenix Suns have done multiple times, simply selling their first round picks, ala Rajon Rondo. It's not much of a stretch to think that a team would want to dump a big contract they don't want to pay, and instead of having to wait for a contract to expire, can come to the Pistons with all of there cap room and include assets, such as draft picks, as incentive for the Pistons to take on big contracts.

Also, THEY ARE UNDER THE CAP SO THE NUMBERS DON'T HAVE TO MATCH!

I'm not even going to go into Curry, but its a short term deal and, quite frankly, you need someone who isn't that good to fire at the end of your rebuilding period. Still, the Pistons have the most valuable asset nowadays in the NBA, cap space, and they can use that in many ways to acquire assets with which to rebuild this team, not necessarily just free agent signings. It's not expiring deals the Pistons would be dealing, its taking on deals that don't expire for awhile in order to give teams either cap space or relief from the luxury tax, both of which teams will be willing to give up either players or draft picks for. They might start dealing expiring contracts later on, when the big contracts they took from other teams expire and someone is looking to start a rebuilding process of their own. There is precedent to teams stockpiling cap space for rebuilding effort, that is the ENTIRE REASON that deals get done for expiring contracts, like you mentioned in your post. The Pistons can now do this better than other teams, because, and I really feel like this is the most important part of this post. THEY ARE UNDER THE CAP, SO THE CONTRACTS DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING MATCH!!!!

and people are being way too unfair on michael curry. this team didn't want to play for flip saunders. why would they ever listen to a rookie coach? i still think he can be a good one.

improvements to the pistons will have to come through signing a young tier two 2010 free agent like joe johnson/amare/bosh (unlikely) an aging 2010 FA like pierce/ginobili/dirk/yao (a dubious decision) or by hitting the jackpot with a mid to low first round pick or through a trade. the latter two options are most likely

in terms of the draft, i think the best options are 1) james johnson, who could fill a need in the post or 2) terrence williams who has star potential if he develops a reliable jumpshot

in terms of trade, the only pistons with trade value are rip, stuckey, tayshaun and first-rounders. stuckey has to stay to justify the billups trade so hopefully joe d does something unexpectedly pleasant with tayshaun and rip, because there really doesnt seem much out there...

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall

i think joe D is doing a great job, and my expectation isn't that they win every year. my point is, if they want to win another championship, or at least compete, they need a superstar. i don't think anyone would argue that. david stern doesn't like teams like the '04 Pistons. they need to retool now, if for no other reason than at least 2 of their starters from this year will be gone.